There are only two problems on the planet – Women and Men!
Seduction Redefined means rediscovering the power of the Feminine in women and in men. It means redefining "progress". It means women remembering their biological role as drivers of evolution, and men allowing themselves to find solace and comfort in partnership. It's women and men using their separate strengths to create a new society. Seduction Redefined is a guide to creative collaboration of the Feminine and Masculine.

AppleHand

We are beginning to remember that, as always, it is the Feminine that possesses the empathy and guidance that the focused and systematic Masculine requires. That is what has made humans a successful species, and the suppression of it has pushed our world to the brink of destruction.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

THE MALLEABLE MALE - OR EVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE?

Make someone happy, Make just one someone happy...

When Jimmy Durante wrote those words he could have been summing up the adaptability of men. Men are always doing things that make them happy, but the underlying reason for their doing all those things is the need to procreate. Doing what they like to do is a turn-on for men, but it is also meant to be a turn-on for a prospective mate. To that end, most of what men do is a mating display to attract women, even if they are not conscious of it. In fact, according to evolutionary psychologists like Professor Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, most of what we now take for granted as culture is actually male behavior based on display for females.

Evolutionists have long understood that the males of most species will tailor their appearance and behavior to the preferences of the females they want to attract. In an interview for our film of Baring Witness, itself a celebration of the power of the female human form to influence men’s behavior, Professor Miller points out, “if a woman advertises herself in a way that says, ‘I’m looking for a warrior prince, somebody who has got his status through aggression, conquest, domination, etc.’, guys will respond in the predictable way in trying to fulfill that role”.

It seems that men will tailor their actions and image to whatever signals women give about what they want from men, including the scary, long-term, responsible role of father to their children. In other sexual species, signals of abundant strength, energy and genetic health are thought to be the most attractive to females, as well as the ability to provide sustenance and protection in those that require the males to share in the rearing of offspring. In humans though, the strengths being advertised (perhaps falsely) can be displayed in ways that are deleterious to the species and counter-productive to the quest for sex.

Everything from acquisition of wealth to riding Harley-Davidsons without mufflers, from altruism to aggression, from blowing things up to curing disease, just about everything a man does, makes or invents, is based on display tactics that he has been taught to believe will be successful. The peacock’s tail is the most obvious example of male display, and one that barely allows the male to survive his predators. Other species are not so lucky and have suffered extinction due to “runaway” traits—traits that are selected over and over through generations, and become more and more pronounced – one possible victim was the Irish elk, which had huge antlers that may have led to its downfall.

One of the most important driving forces behind evolution is female selection for mating. Male animals will assume almost any discomfort and will physically adapt to almost any female preference if it means they will have the chance to pass their genes on to the next generation. Peacocks grow larger tails; bullfrogs croak louder; if enough women chose men with big feet, within two or three generations big-footed men would be the norm. And while human sex may not always be for the sole purpose of procreation, men have a lot in common with peacocks and bullfrogs when it comes to display. In the human case, male display is complicated by the active and resourceful human brain (itself a product of display), which has given men so many ways in which they can advertise their skills and traits.

Humans are inquisitive and adaptable. With their large brains and cooperative societies, they are capable of surviving anywhere they can build shelter, and they have shown themselves to be able to invent and make anything they put their minds to, including “gods”.

For thousands of years the male humans have been in charge of redesigning their environment to suit their needs. They have built cities, wiped out predators and engineered food production using synthetics and huge machinery. They have discovered how to make machines fly, how to send them to other planets, they have created languages, writing, poetry, mathematics, music and visual arts. They have thought up ever more ingenious and effective ways of killing each other.

Human males generally regard all this unequivocally as “progress”. It goes unquestioned and men see the progress as a means unto itself. “I progress therefore I am.” Evolutionary scientists, however, see a simple reason behind the drive for progress and in the very growth of the brain that produces it. Sex.

When distilled down to its core most male behavior is based on the primal need to display desirable traits in order to be selected for mating by females. The need to pass genes on to succeeding generations is the great driving force of all life on our planet, and in most sexual species it is the males who display while the females select.

Part of human “progress” has been to make this simple dynamic very complicated. It’s our big brain, always figuring out new ways of doing things, plus the formation of societies ruled by males, rather than by a partnership of males and females. When men started to decide what women should find attractive, the dating and mating game became a minefield of doubts and misunderstandings between the sexes. The natural course of sexual selection became diverted by the formation of patriarchies, which took the evolutionary power of the female and subdued it through arranged marriage, restrictions on female freedoms and the religious taboos concerning sex and procreation. Men took control of mating choices and taught succeeding generations of women the traits that men found desirable in men, rather than the traits that women might naturally have selected for. Thus, not only did women lose control of mate choices, their preferences were gradually changed as well. Generations of daughters were born with innate preferences for men with traits that men wished to maintain so that their lives could be as “masculine” as possible, with little to deter them from rapacious “progress” with little thought of peripheral consequences.

We are finally reaping the dubious rewards of millennia of such social and genetic engineering. Unencumbered by truly effective alternative modalities from the female half of the species, men have ridden roughshod over the Earth, laying waste to wildernesses and forests, slaughtering those humans unfortunate enough to be in their way, and have finally found a way to obey their own Biblical injunction, straight from the lips of their own “God”—take dominion over the earth and its beasts—by threatening the destruction of natural systems and tipping the delicate balance of Nature towards annihilation of our species, and many others before we die.

Women were also trained to be vain and demanding, to give men the excuse and impetus they needed to create “progress”. After all, their natural drive is to display for women, so what better way to display than to accede to their wives’ demands for more stuff, more money, greater social standing? Thus, both men and women have been complicit in perverting evolution by promoting patriarchies, creating and obeying societal standards that have served to suppress the Feminine. Some cases are overtly brutal, such as the cliterectomies carried out by West African women on their daughters and grand-daughters, or the foot-binding of Imperial Chinese girls’ feet by their mothers. Others are less overtly horrifying, but no less damaging in the long run, like the refusal of American mothers to discuss sex and birth control with their daughters and sons, so prolonging the ignorance and confusion and sustaining the patriarchal, feminine-suppressing status quo.

We have reached a point beyond blame and retribution, even if the latter were possible. No-one is personally to blame for obeying the rules of the societies our forefathers created. We are suffering the effects of the conditioning of millennia. But most people will do anything for a quiet life, so close consideration of our behavior and destructive ways, or making radical change in them, is an unattractive prospect to most. But the writing on the wall is becoming clearer with time, and humans are awakening to the need for new paradigms and consciousness of the consequences of our current actions.

Radical change in the form of partnership societies is a dream that can come true, if we begin soon enough. It takes one woman at a time, returning to her natural place as initiator of partnership and guide to her chosen mate. When men are guided into true, creative and conscious partnership with women, not only are couples and co-workers happier and more fulfilled, the work of living becomes easier and more effective. Men and women together, balancing the focused intention of one with the holistic vision of the other, taking responsibility for their actions, listening deeply to each other, understanding the foundations of each other’s cognition, just might bring us to an era of less destruction.

There will be resistance, of course, from men who only hear the drumbeat of centuries of aggression and from women camp followers egging them on in hope of plundered swag. But the future is with the males who can adapt to the necessities of survival and the mating preferences of females, and with females who can stand up and choose mates that will benefit, not hinder, the species, as is the case with most of Nature’s creatures.

The malleable male—the peacock, the bird of paradise, the bullfrog, the mindful man—will be the key to his species’ survival, be he Alpha or Beta. The runaway traits that have brought us and many other species to the brink must be slowed and stopped in their tracks. As the era of feminine awakening continues in the human race, the masculine transformation must take place if we and coming generations are to reap the benefits of the true progress of our species, in new, exciting directions and with new inventiveness and attentiveness. And it starts now...

1 comment:

Nice article, but I think what you are calling progression may actually be entropy in the wake that only masculinity generates attributes such as valor and dominion. Those who can not cope under the shadow of dominance, seek whatever means to throw off the yoke of higher standards, and be it of a man to step back and allow liberty, which eventually results in catastrophe. Leading males select their mates just as leading females seemingly select their mate, but one needs not but look at the general condition of the world at large in lieu of historical fact not coincidence to understand that the devils we now are coming to know are worse than the devils we once knew. Being that more beta males are produced dues to an over seeing system that benefits the poor and oppressed, it therefore gives the illusion that the 'system supported' people are doing the choosing. The result is ecclesiastical, yet forgotten in time and doomed to be repeated again. I think you related to this somewhat, but what I see in your words of inventiveness is merely a re-inventiveness, a returning, because not all aggressive dominant males were disliked, nor were all damaging regardless of the current belief in a falsified dogma propagated by those who seek dominance though deception. Regardless of that, a real man keeps power in reserve, and will be welcomed back by feminist and the newly downtrodden alike. Many clamor for it today and more yet will clamor in the future as freedom is given to many who fail to do what it right with it, and not doing what is right, that is, what is difficult, only results in failure, then those who can do what is right will begrudgingly receive willful submission from the hands of the failed. Although, I think there is a collaboration between feminine and masculine and that is the realization and acceptance that we are not equal and never were.Great article !